Military aircraft in 1/48, 1946—present

Airfix 1/48 SEPECAT Jaguar GR.1A

with Xtraparts photo-etched detail set and resin seat

Royal Air Force, JAGDET, Bahrain 1991

Another model inspired by a Jonathan Mock article in Scale Models International that seemed to logically follow on from my Buccaneer build. The base kit is Airfix, and is quite nice, but I added Xtraparts (subsequently Paragon) photo-etch for the cockpit, undercarriage, antennae and airbrakes, as well as an Xtraparts resin seat, exhaust cans and chaff dispensers. These were all beautiful, and it’s a shame my modelling skills were not up to showing them off to anywhere near their best — these were my first attempts at using aftermarket goodies. The decals are from the kit and the finish is a custom-mixed acrylic mainly made up of Games Workshop paints. The green chipping is an underlying acrylic that was masked using Copydex (a rubber glue rather like a liquid mask) which was then oversprayed with the pink. The nose pitot and nosewheel have fallen off a few times and the model is beginning to look a bit sorry for itself. At this stage I had also not figured out that a lot of light was needed to photograph models, and so not only is the quality of the model poor, but the photos are too!